<p>I was reflecting on my life recently and thought not about how much has changed but how little. I was born in the late 50’s. </p>
<p>My dad was born in 1929. He remembered their first radio, which my grandparents still had - a big floor model that you’d sit in front of. He remembers my grandfather taught him to drive by pulling over and saying, “Here, you try it.” There was no FM. They had cars but not really heat and no radio and no automatic steering - and I think no automatic transmission though it may have been available in a few cars. No TV. Movies were almost all black and white - with The Wizard of OZ and Gone With The Wind making a huge color splash in 1939. No big highways. No freeways at all. If you drove to the west coast, it was on side roads and through every little town. My dad did this in 1946. There were airplanes but no jets and air travel was for very few. They had a house of course with central heating but there was no AC. </p>
<p>And my grandparents were born in Europe, mostly in what is now Belarus. There was electricity in the towns but not in the villages and maybe in 1 or 2 of their houses. They rode wagons and horses. They used telegraph though phones existed and were becoming more common in the US and more civilized parts of Europe. The movies barely existed. No radio. Cars barely existed. Planes barely existed. Central heat was rare. </p>
<p>But if I go back to when I was 10 or 11, I’m in Mad Men: the clothes look familiar and I can smell the pot. We were just starting to see color TV but the difference between color and b&w is not nearly like that from TV to no TV. A few houses were getting AC - which I think ruined the suburbs because all those open doors suddenly had to be closed to keep the warm out and the cold in. Movies. Cars have improved but are recognizably similar. The only real differences are the computer and, separately, the internet along with mobile phones. Three huge things but the fabric of life is very much the same. Yes, people aren’t smoking everywhere and there are TV’s in every restaurant - including where you don’t want them - but the change for my parents and for their parents in the items of daily life were much greater.</p>
<p>We get more fruit & vegetables year round but they had no frozen food - barely had a refrigerator - and my grandparents depended on what could be grown near them. My grandfather opened one of the early modern supermarkets. It was a marvel with its checkout registers and those belts for groceries. My dad was alive. My great grandmother had to chase a wolf away from the wagon near Lehovici.</p>
<p>Vaccines for many common infections diseases are now available. Smallpox in the wild has been eradicated, and many other formerly common diseases like measles and polio are now rare in the US.</p>
<p>Cars are much easier to drive, more fuel efficient, more comfortable, less polluting, and safer than they were in the 1950s. “Easier to drive” includes things like power steering, power assisted brakes and clutches, no more “three on the tree” manual shifters, etc… “Less polluting” includes both the tailpipe emissions and the end leaking oil that was a standard feature on many cars of decades past – the leaking oil left treacherous oil slicks down the middle of each lane that got very dangerous when the first rain came. “Safer” includes such features as seat belts, engineered crumple zones, and better brakes and tires.</p>
<p>OP-you got color tv about 1970? My parents got it in 1986…the year I graduated college. I was so jealous my friends had color console tvs and we never did.</p>
<p>I do think often about the vast changes during the lives of my grandparents and greatgrandparents. My ggf was born in 1869, in a log cabin. No electricity, no central heat, no indoor plumbing, no tax returns. By the time he died in 1955 he had all that, plus tv and phone, and was flying to Florida every winter and busy getting speeding tickets the rest of the year.</p>
<p>I was a premature baby in 1957. My mom had gone into labor a month early, & although her labor had stopped by the time she was admitted, because the OB didnt want to " waste" his time, he then induced labor after which I was sequestered in the NICU and my parents couldn’t touch me until I was discharged a month later.</p>
<p>Almost 25 years later, my oldest was born ten weeks early. We were allowed to see her & touch her as much as possible and she came home before her due date when she could maintain her body temp and go for a couple days without ABCs ( apnea/bradycardia/cyanosis) when she weighed 3lbs 10oz.</p>
<p>My grandmother had a big floor model AM radio. It was a fine piece of furniture too - solid wood with elegantly carving. I recall that it took a long time for the vacuum tubes to warm up enough that the device would make any sound. You had to turn it on a couple of minutes before you actually wanted to listen.</p>
<p>We got our first color TV in 1964 - only the second color TV in the small town in which we lived at the time. And the first one in a house that had kids. Thus, all the neighborhood kids came over to our house to watch the color TV. My dad was an early adopter of new technologoes like that. </p>
<p>As I recall there were only three TV shows broadcast in color then: “Bonanza,” “Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color,” and “That Was the Week that Was” - a witty current events satire show that I loved.</p>
<p>At first there were no commercials in color. The first commercials broadcast in color that I recall were for Coca-Cola.</p>
<p>My father was born in 1909. When he was 9 years old, in 1918, he got the Spanish flu, along with millions of others in the U.S. He wound up getting pneumonia and almost died. The doctor visited him twice a day, and he missed a year of school.</p>
<p>In 1994, my son was nine and got pneumonia. He was treated with antibiotics and missed a week of school.</p>
<p>I’m really a fan of today. I don’t like those “nostalgia” Facebook "remember when . . . " posts.</p>
<p>I remember:
Encyclopedias that took up a full wall of bookshelves, with update volumes that came once a year.
Calling my parents collect from college from the pay phone in the hall, and then they called me back.
Phone booths
Watching television shows when they were actually on (and how that killed Star Trek for a few decades)
When I asked my father for a calculator in high school, he handed me a piece of paper & a pencil
Telexes
Carbon paper
Mimeograph machines (anyone remember the smell?)
Manual typewriters
Women told that it was a “waste” to educate us, since we’d just go get married anyway
The Draft
The Vietnam War
No women lawyers, few women doctors, businesses that could refuse to hire married women or could fire them for getting married (or worse, pregnant)
No video games, no videos
Smallpox
Polio</p>
<p>^^You remember smallpox? Where were you living? The last case of smallpox in the US occurred in 1949. I remember the smallpox vaccine, but I never knew of anyone actually getting smallpox.</p>
<p>^^I was at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health when the last case of smallpox was eradicated from the world. Since smallpox has no animal host, eradicating it via the vaccine from all human hosts ended its transmission.</p>
<p>I do have the vaccine, and I also remember getting the polio vaccine on sugar cubes in the school cafeteria.</p>
<p>Chedva, I’m older than you. I remember the sugar cubes, but by then I was in 7th grade. I remember getting the polio vaccine SHOT (I think that was the Salk vaccine) in kindergarten or first grade. </p>
<p>Sabin figured out the sugar cube vaccine. Much more palatable.</p>
<p>I’m old enough to have a vaccine scar on my arm (didn’t they switch to the thigh to hide the scar at some point?).</p>
<p>And old enough to remember when TV was free but long distance phone calls were expensive. Now I pay Verizon $9.99 for unlimited US calling, but $120 for TV and Internet access - whatever that is.</p>
<p>I got a scar on my thigh from the polio vaccine as well as took the sugar cube. I also remember when long distance calls were expensive and whenever I’d call, dad would say, “Your mom isn’t home, do you need money?” Our “conversations” very little time. my kids are like that and not chatty either. <sigh></sigh></p>
<p>I still remember seeing horses calmly graze in the 1970s on land across the highway, between the highway and the ocean. The horses are long gone and replaced with multi-million dollar homes. There are homes and roads and highways everywhere, sadly.</p>
<p>My mother grew up with no one in the family driving or owning an automobile. Depression-era - Grandpa managed to put all 4 kids through college.</p>
<p>I remember being given the sugar cube. I remember when we had only one car and my mom learned how to drive. I remember our first TV…and our first color TV. I remember my mom making a pitcher of martinis everyday and putting them in the fridge for when my dad got home from the office. I remember my phone number had letters at the beginning and milk was delivered into the milk box. I remember getting measles, mumps, chickenpox and scarlet fever…all in one year…kindergarten…and the physician came to the house. I remember going on my first plane trip when I was 7 and it was a really, really big deal and we got all dressed up. I remember my father bought a VW beetle in 1962…but he never drove it to Detroit for business, that was a no-no. I was born in the mid-50s.</p>
<p>My folks managed to put mom through her master’s in special ed and all 7 of us through college and 6 of us through grad/professional school–OOS or in private Us out of state for our final degrees. Dad worked full-time and mom started working full-time when the youngest was in 2nd grade, which was when the oldest was in flagship U.</p>
<p>People didn’t used to flaunt things as much. Everyone drove the car until they “needed” a new one. The wealthy family down the street wore the same clothes as the kids of the guy who owned the gas station. Everybody went to religious services and got religious education.</p>
<p>We really were taught, by our parents, that integrity and honesty were more important than winning. People didn’t brag about things. </p>
<p>Parents didn’t drive their kids to “activities.” If you couldn’t do it at school or get there on foot or on your bike, you didn’t do it. Nobody had test prep or tutors. </p>
<p>When we went out in high school, we left the house and never spoke to our parents until we returned home. The police would follow you home rather than arrest you. </p>
<p>The biggest change, of course, is in the number of college graduates and attendees. Now, nearly the same percentage of the population graduates from college as used to get a high school degree.</p>